Dyer’s memoir is a funny and often painful book that both follows and departs from the traditional working-class bildungsroman. It offers, perhaps, a stranger account than even Dyer quite allows: at times, a wounded narrative pretending not to be. Many of the classic elements are here—the murky atrocity of school food; the ecstatic discovery of literature (for Dyer, especially Shakespeare) and music (gallons of dubious prog rock); a spurt or two of rebellion; sexual fumblings in cars; the anxious opening of exam results in “buff-coloured” envelopes, those official passports to the wider world.
He says,
Here, for the record, are the smallest specificities of a working-class English childhood in the sixties and seventies. Down among the Cadbury Fruit & Nut, the Vesta beef curry, and the Huntley & Palmers Breakfast Biscuits is a reality rarely touched by theorists, who are too busy theorizing.
I’m interested in that reality. I will read Dyer’s book. Even if I wasn’t interested, I’d read it anyway for the pleasure of Dyer’s delectable style – a combination of “extended riffing, comic loitering, and dry exaggeration” (Wood’s description).
Near the end of his review, Wood touches on something I strongly relate to – the role that chance plays in the way our lives unfold. He says, “Dyer’s rise is solitary, freakish, and shadowed always by the chance that it might never have happened.” Shadowed always by the chance that it might never have happened. Exactly. I know that feeling. Wood expresses it perfectly.
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Hey John! I'm Sam; I write my own series reviewing the new yorker, which you can find at lastweeksnewyorker.review – just wanted to say I'll be bookmarking your page.
ReplyDeleteGreetings fellow newyorkerphile! I just looked at your blog. Pretty damn impressive! So many comments! I don't know how you do it. I find reviewing just one piece exhausting. Pardon me for asking, but are you for real?
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